This paper examines the relationship of the Deleuzean Virtual and Actual as it plays out in hardcore video gaming along the Plane of the Real. The test case is that of Shawn Woolley, who committed suicide after being influenced by what was purportedly an excessive amount of time playing EverQuest, a well-known online role-playing game. However, the essay does not approach the Woolley case from a moralistic or psychological point of view. Instead, I am interested in proposing a mechanics of the Actual/Virtual, in which the gamer's organized body becomes, in game, a Deleuzean Body without Organs (a multiplicity). Other analogous strata and folds, such as the empty and naively bourgeois values of Woolley's suburban life, merely exacerbate matters.

Comments

ISBN 9780230545441 (print); 9780230583306 (e-book)

Citation Information

Cain, Jeffrey. "Another Bricolage in the Deleuze and Teenage Alienation." Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: Games Without Frontiers, Wars Without Tears. Eds. Andreas Jahn Sudmann and Ralf Stockmann. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.